app2usb - helpful advice on transfer speeds and game formats

[Evilengine]

Firstly if you already know how to run app2usb it's a plus, you have to set up the HDD in the right way and make some *.ini file changes eventually, there are tutorials around.

I faced several problems using it, while it is the best solution I know of, to have games storable and playable at the same time, if you don't have a very big internal HDD, that can hold all your games.

If you use the regular/non-app2usb way to have an external storage, you have to convert the HDD into PS4 filesystem, that Windows is not easily allowing to read/write.
So, if you want to keep the *.pkg file of a game for later reinstall or why not, you still have to keep them seperately from the PS4 drives and use 2x the space. Otherwise you have to dump the installed game somehow or at least copy it out of the PS4.

With app2usb you still have just the same packages that you used to install to your PS4, you can just play it but you also have easy access to it and you can copy it from a computer. This comes closest to just play an *.iso game for example, it is always a plus if you can store a game in a single or just very few files instead of a directory with thousands of files.

Also really nice is, you can use that app2usb external HDD to install new games from it, aswell.

Here are the two advices, that made me open this thread:

What will save A LOT of time - after you installed a game with one or multiple *.pkg files, you just move it/them into the PS4/CUSAXXXXX/ (equivalent to the game id ) folder on the USB HDD.
When you then run app2usb it will recognize that you have that game already on your external HDD. Then will delete it in the PS4's internal HDD and just link the internal game to the external HDD.

If you install a very large game and then don't put the *.pkg file/s to the PS4/CUSAXXXXX folder, app2usb would just copy the package back(again) to the USB HDD, this step can be saved, when you just move the package manually.



Second problem was, if you happen to get a game that is labeled "REPACK", you should stay away from that.
I guess those repacks combine the multiple packages of a game into one *.pkg.
So if you install this to your PS4 internally, it gets split again into GAME/UPDATE/DLC, etc.
So when you want to run app2usb, app2usb recognizes that game as different from the REPACK *.pkg, even if you put it into the PS4/CUSAXXXXX folder on the app2usb external HDD, like I adviced before.
That means it will just copy the game again to the external HDD and you may end up having it two times or somehow corrupt.
Those repack games were often ultra slow to copy (from internal install to USB), like a whole day slow, when it should normally go in between 10-40 minutes.
Meaning almost impossible to have them on the external storage this way!
What helped was get the normal *.pkg files, that are still seperate between game files.

I hope this can help someone, I had a few times the problem, that I installed a game but using it with app2usb was not working properly and many games were hanging while moving from internal to external, so finding a solution took me a while.

tl;dr
NO REPACKS!
MOVE PKG TO CUSAXXXXX FOLDER AFTER INSTALL BEFORE USING APP2USB!

 

[Randqalan]

My biggest problem I don't like about app2usb is sleep mode will not work to suspend game and not showing internal correct size.

 

[Evilengine]

I see, I guess it's a solution to have the most important games internally then. Plan for me is to have a large internal one at one point.
When you unplug the USB HDD, the internal size is shown correctly, isn't it?

 

[Randqalan]

I see, I guess it's a solution to have the most important games internally then. Plan for me is to have a large internal one at one point.
When you unplug the USB HDD, the internal size is shown correctly, isn't it?

Yeah size is correct if using internal and official external hdd and with official suspension works with external.

 

[Donnie-Burger]

I've been using this for years - Works on all pkgs and doesnt matter if they are married or not. There is no transfer if you set it up right and linking is fastest way. Correct size will show if the usb is plugged in and being read. I've done a few 18-22tb usb drives all app2usb. If your going with a big usb like 8tb or more its good to have at least 1tb or more internal as linking the games will eat up internal space when you have a lot (Most games links are small but some have chunky sizes).

 

[Evilengine]

I had the problem a few times, that the packages got a mismatch, also in case it didn't look like a repack. Then it's not linking, instead trying to write it back to USB but then hangs like forever. Redownloading the same package didn't help, only getting another version could help me here. I excluded those in the app2usb.ini, but I can't exclude the updates, so I went to deleting them. In some cases, like Red Dead Redemption 2, I couldn't find any update version yet, that is linking and they always loop for many hours, when they are sent back...

 

[Evilengine]

I realized, that it is indeed NOT the repacks fault, just sometimes any kind of package can create a mismatch.
In some cases it helped to get another version for that game, in some cases waiting over 24 hours helped to let the mismatched package get replaced. So i really don't know how these mismatches occur, it is a bit time consuming to figure it out and replace them.